cat’s paw, (be made) a

A dupe, a sucker who does another person’s dirty work. The term comes from an ancient tale about a monkey who wanted to get some roasted chestnuts out of the fire and, not wanting to burn his own fingers, got his friend the cat to use his paws for this purpose. There are numerous versions of the story in various languages; often it is a dog that is made the dupe, but in English it is the cat’s paw that has stuck over the years. Also see PULL THE CHESTNUTS

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beer and skittles, (life is) not all

Life is not all FUN AND GAMES. Skit- tles, a kind of bowling game played by throwing wooden disks at pins, was very popular in Great Britain, where drinking beer remains a widespread form of recreation. Pairing the two came about quite naturally in the nine- teenth century. Dickens’s Sam Weller assures Mr. Pickwick, who is about to enter a debtor’s prison, that the prisoners enjoy themselves there: “It’s a regular holiday to them—all porter and skittles” (Pickwick Papers). But Dick- ens’s contemporary Thomas Hughes observed that “Life isn’t all beer and skittles” (Tom Brown’s School Days). Essentially a British cliché, it spread to America but is heard less often today. Legendary adman David Ogilvy had it in Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963): “Managing an advertising agency is not all beer and skittles.”

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cat on a hot tin roof, like a

Skittish, nervous, ill at ease. A similar anal- ogy—“like a cat on a hot bake-stone”—appeared in John Ray’s Proverbs of 1678. It was later replaced by “like a cat on hot bricks,” still used in the mid- twentieth century, but Tennessee Williams preferred the more picturesque “hot tin roof ” for the title of his 1955 play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

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been there, done that

I’ve had this experience and I’m bored with it. The implication of this relatively new and seemingly worldweary statement is, why bother to repeat something I’ve seen or done. However, it is also used as an expression of empathy, as in “You’ve offered to take care of the children for a week? Been there, done that.” The phrase dates only from the early 1980s and at first referred to tourism and sightseeing, but soon was extended to just about any activity. Moreover, it became overused so quickly that it became a cliché virtually in a decade and a half. Also see SEEN ONE, SEEN THEM ALL.

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cat got your tongue, has the

Why are you silent? According to Eric Partridge, this term dates from the mid-nineteenth century in both England and the United States and was one of several phrases used in addressing a child who, after getting into trouble, refused to answer questions. The lit- eral meaning is quite far-fetched, so it obviously comes from the grown- up’s invention of some bizarre circumstance that prevents the child from speaking. There is an analogous French idiom, “I throw [or give] my tongue to the cat,” meaning “I give up; I have nothing to say.”

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bee in one’s bonnet, to have a

To have a strange fixation about some- thing; to have an eccentric idea or fantasy. A version of the term appears in Robert Herrick’s “Mad Maid’s Song” (c. 1648): “. . . the bee which bore my love away, I’ll seek him in your bonnet brave.” Allegedly the expression stems from the analogy of a bee buzzing inside one’s hat to a peculiar idea in one’s head. It has been a cliché since the eighteenth century. Lest one think it is obsolete, it appeared in a 2004 murder mystery: “By the way, what bee got into your bonnet at the meeting? Bailey had been pretty cooperative” (David Baldacci, Hour Game).

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catch (someone)

with his pants down, to To embarrass someone, to surprise someone when he is at a disadvantage. The term is American and there are several theories about its origin. One holds that it comes from a husband catching another man with his wife. Another claims it refers to an enemy catching a soldier relieving himself.

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